After a 10-year brewing hiatus I started back into it late in the fall, and since I had to set everything up again I switched to all-grain at the same time. The first batch was a lot of fun, tasted well and was consumed quickly (although it never cleared that well, I never had that problem in extract brewing - but that is a problem for another day). I learned from the 8 hour marathon and refined my equipment for the second batch that I just finished a few nights ago. Unlike 10 years ago , I could actually afford to buy some equipment this time. So I now have a cheap liquor tank, a large coleman cooler tun, a homemade CF chiller and a Blichmann 15 gallon kettle. The CF chiller cools remarkably well, but I didn't like struggling with getting the flow started, nor the hot wort waiting in the tank for its turn to cool, nor the full cold break going into my fermenter. So I splurged on a March pump, and for my second batch I simply pumped the chilled wort back into the brew kettle solving my three problems (more or less). This system seems to work well, but I have one remaining beginners process problem that is driving me crazy. The March pump is lower that everything else for priming purposes, and I only have one ball valve in the kettle itself. So after chilling I have to close that valve, then lift the entire pump, connecting hoses and CF contraption up higher than the kettle to try to get it to drain (and try to avoid the wort shooting out of the newly disconnected hose that was attached to the kettle) - awkward to say the least. It did work, but not without wasting a precious litre on my garage floor How do pump users deal with emptying connecting lines (whether attached to a CF or whatever) and a pump that are lower than the brewing set up? Everyone must face this, and I am sure there is a simple solution. But I can't find it by googling, and help would be much appreciated

I think it's just a matter of accepting that there will be some dribbles here and there and add that extra volume to your batch size. A litre sounds like a bit much though and it sounds like you don't have a valve on the output of your pump. I always close off that throttling valve before removing the input/output lines from the vessels. That locks the liquid in, all but a teaspoon or so that drips out of the valve. Most of the time I just fold up an old warn out beach towel and lay it on the floor. It gets laundered later. In warm weather, I let it hit the floor and I just hose it off later. Oh, and since the lines, pump and CFC do hold some volume, one way to purge it out is to boil about a gallon in your HLT towards the end of the wort boil, then right when you're done chilling, move the input line of the pump over to the HLT and use the hot water to purge all the wort out. I only go through this trouble when I'm making a 1.090+ OG beer. When you use a plate chiller, you can actually collect the coolant output into your HLT for cleaning later and it's pure. I wouldn't do the wort chase trick with it though since it's touching all that rubber hose in the CFC (assuming it DIY).

I don't have a valve on the pump outlet, but this makes sense. The reason why my loss is so high now is that as soon as I turn off the pump and detach the hose from the kettle, the contents of the CFC immediately start flowing back towards the newly disconnected hose. The litre of hot water, plus the addition of the valve downstream of the pump seems like a good solution. The inside of the CFC is copper, so no worries there (it is a 35 foot roughly 3/8" copper pipe I had laying around, inserted into a garden hose).

I just put a small order in to your store, I have added a valve on the pump outlet - now I just need your disconnects The obvious solution I missed is simply kinking the outlet tube by hand while removing it - duhhhh!